This is some of the most strained, desperate spin I have ever encountered in American politics. Imagine trying to argue that Mitt Romney’s foreign adventure has been a triumphant success! Still, what I hear from my liberal friends is skepticism that any of it will matter. My answer is that of course it will matter. I received a really lame email from Paul Begala asking me to donate money to the DCCC. He told me that 96% of the electorate has already made up their mind who they are going to vote for. That is complete bullshit. People’s political opinions are nowhere near as set in stone as these analysts would like you to believe. I did a lot of canvassing in 2004 and I talked to a lot of voters in July and August of that year. I heard all kinds of crazy things. I can’t tell you how many soft Democrats I met who planned to vote for Bush because they wanted him to have to clean up the mess he created in Iraq. “Why should a Democrat have to do that job?”, they asked. People make their decisions about who to vote for in weird ways.
People do not throw out incumbents lightly. They must be convinced not only that the incumbent is doing a bad job, but that someone else will do a better job. That’s the test Romney needs to pass, and his foreign adventure was supposed to help him make that case. It did anything but.
And he won’t get another chance. Just as in 2008, a lot of Republicans took a long look at Sarah Palin and decided that they couldn’t pull the Republican trigger, Romney lost Republican votes by demonstrating total incompetence during his trip abroad.
This trip hurt him in a vital way.
